Mobile app engagement campaigns are a great choice for advertisers focused on getting people who’ve installed their app to try the app again, or open it and take specific action. These ads allow flexibility for counting conversions, bidding, and targeting.

It’s extremely important for an advertiser to re-engage with someone who’s already downloaded an app in order to try to prevent it from being abandoned. With app engagement ads, advertisers can show customized ads to people who already have the app, thereby driving them back into it.

How app engagement campaigns work on the Display Network

Search Network app engagement campaigns

App engagement campaigns on the Search Network help you to show ads in search results on mobile phones and tablets to people who already have installed your app. Your ads can encourage your app’s current users to open your app and do something related to what they were searching for on Google. Expand the section below to learn more.

How app engagement campaigns work on the Search Network

App engagement campaigns on the Search Network are available only for Android apps. These campaigns work best for apps with a substantial number of users, since ads are only shown to people who have the app. To get more people to download your app, you can create a mobile app install campaign.

App engagement does . . .

App engagement doesn’t . . .

Drive existing app users back into the app

Use device IDs and play data

Allow ads to run in AdMob (other apps)

Allow clicks to “deep link” to a specific page/section of the app

Support dynamic ad creative or dynamic remarketing (unlike with desktop)

Use cookies

Allow ads to run on mobile sites or desktop

About deep linking

A type of destination URL in an ad that takes people to a specific page in an app.

For ads on the web, you can use a simple destination URL, such as www.example.com, to send people to your website landing page. To send people straight to an a product page on that website, you could use a different URL, with a little more information: www.example.com/product_1234. For mobile apps, these URLs are called deep links.

For your destination URL in app engagement ads, you can use a link that just opens your app, or a deep link that will send people directly to a specific screen in your app. Tracking parameters are allowed for these links.

Deep links are not automatically set up when you create your app, and they work differently on iOS and Android. For app engagement campaigns on the Search Network, we generate an app URI using your deep link so that your ads are compatible with Google Search.